Measuring multiple components of emotions in interactive contexts

The study of users' emotional behavior in HCI has been receiving increasing attention for the last few years. This paper focuses on emotions as an important part of a user's overall experience when interacting with a system. Based on the multi-component approach to emotions proposed by Scherer [15], different aspects of emotions in an interactive context were investigated: subjective feelings, physiological activation, motor expression, cognitive appraisals, and behavioral tendencies. To induce different emotional states, two versions of an interactive system were employed which differed with respect to quality of use. The results suggest that systems of high usability lead to more positive emotions than systems with usability flaws. methods: rating scales for subjective feelings, EMG for facial muscles, heart rate, EDA, performance data and questionnaires on cognitive appraisals. We suggest that this combination provides a comprehensive basis for analyzing emotions in HCI.